The Supreme Court (SC) on Sunday deferred the hearing until May 3 on the review petition against its verdict upholding the death penalty of war criminal Jamaat Ameer Motiur Rahman Nizami awarded by the International Crimes Tribunal .
A four-member bench of the Appellate Division, led by Chief Justice SK Sinha, fixed the date, as the court is set to go on the summer vacation from April 14 till May 2, after Nizami’s lawyer Khandker Mahbub Hossain submitted a petition seeking four weeks’ time in the morning.
The Appellate Division on April 3 fixed today (April 9) for hearing on the review petition of Nizami deferring the date by one week.
The review petition was enlisted as item number 19 on Sunday’s cause list of the Appellate Division.
On March 29, Barrister Najib Momen, son of Nizami, who submitted the 70-page review petition with the Appellate Division, said there was a mention of 46 grounds, seeking the release of the convict in the war crimes case.
Earlier on March 15, the ICT issued a death warrant for Nizami for his crimes against humanity during the Liberation War in 1971 after the apex court released the full text of its verdict upholding his death penalty.
On January 6, a four-member bench of the Appellate Division, headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha, upheld the death sentence of the Jamaat Ameer.
The Appellate Division upheld the ICT-1 order sentencing Nizami to death for the wartime crimes, including genocide and murder of intellectuals.
The apex court upheld his death penalty for three of the four counts of charges while he was acquitted for the rest one.
The SC upheld his life term imprisonment for two charges, out of four in connection with the arrest, detention, torture, and murder of three people, including headmaster Maulana Kasim Uddin of Pabna Zila School on June 4, 1971, complicity in torture, murder and rape at Mohammadpur Physical Training Institute in Dhaka, and murder of Badi, Rumi Jewel and Azad at Old MP Hostel in Dhaka on August 30, 1971.
The Appellate Division acquitted the Jamaat leader of two other charges.
On October 29, 2014, the ICT-1 sentenced Nizami to death for committing crimes against humanity during the Liberation War.
The tribunal sentenced Nizami, the 1971 commander-in-chief of Al Badr, a secret killing squad of Jamaate-e-Islami, the capital punishment each on four counts of charges of war crimes, terming Al Badr a criminal outfit.
Nizami filed an appeal with the SC on November 23, 2014 challenging the death sentence and claimed himself innocent and sought to be cleared of the charges. — Dhaka, Apr 10 (UNB)
